Thor was awarded an Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to resolve epigenetic instability during human pluripotent state transitions. The R35 award provides long term support to an experienced investigator with an outstanding record of research productivity. This support is intended to encourage investigators to embark on long-term projects of unusual potential.
Thank you, NIGMS, for your continued support of our research program!
Second-year students Kyoung Park and Richard Yin successfully passed their Qualifying Exams in the Developmental, Regenerative, and Stem Cell Biology PhD Program. Congrats to Kyoung and Richard!
Thor has joined the Advisory Board of Cell Stem Cell, a broad-spectrum journal that covers the entire spectrum of stem cell biology.
Cell Stem Cell publishes research reports describing novel results of unusual significance in all areas of stem cell research. Each issue also contains a wide variety of review and analysis articles covering topics relevant to stem cell research ranging from basic biological advances to ethical, policy, and funding issues.
As a member of the Advisory Board, Thor will advise the in-house editorial team on journal content and help shape the next phase of the journal’s growth.
We recently welcomed two new graduate students to our lab:
Kyoung Park earned a Master of Science in Biology from Yonsei University, South Korea, and previously served as a Research Technician in our lab from 2018 to 2022. She played a key role in starting the lab and collaborated closely with Dr. Jianlong Wang’s lab at Columbia University on the OCT4 protein interaction network in naive and primed hPSCs, identifying pluripotent-state-specific interactions with distinct subunits of the BAF chromatin remodeling complex. She enrolled in the Developmental, Regenerative, and Stem Cell Biology Program in 2022 and re-joined our lab as a graduate student in March 2023.
Richard Yin is a member of the Developmental, Regenerative, and Stem Cell Biology Program and joined the Theunissen lab in August 2023. He earned his B.S. from the University of Toronto in 2022. He started his research journey as a volunteer in Dr. Phedias Diamandis’ lab, studying potential therapeutic targets in glioblastoma tumour microenvironments. As an undergraduate researcher under Dr. Jennifer A. Mitchell, he investigated the evolutionary role of human-specific KLF4 enhancer candidates in pluripotent stem cells. His passion for stem cell research led him to pursue a Ph.D. at WashU. Outside the lab, he enjoys cooking, rock-climbing, gaming, and movies.
Welcome Richard and welcome back Kyoung!
Thor spoke at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Society of Reproductive Investigation in Brisbane, Australia, from March 21-25, 2023. He presented our latest studies on stem-cell-based models of human placental development in the Concurrent Mini-Symposium entitled “Studying the Maternal-Fetal Interface Using Stem Cells and Organoids.” Thanks to the organizers for the kind invitation to participate in this fantastic event!
Theunissen Lab 